This is the complexity of Steemit. The most I made on a post before this one was 0.14 cents and as you can see this one earned significantly more than that, and at the same time much less than I expected considering the fact that it earned everything in the first day and since then has actually been losing money slowly leading to the 7th day. This, I am very certain, has more to do with understanding the science behind how Steemit works and less about the content itself as in all media the rule still applies, "if I haven't seen it, it's new to me." This means if the post had the same level of community exposure from day 1 to day 7, it would continue to increase in earnings naturally. Unless there is some alternate factor that influences post exposure, such as
1)The algorithm preferring new over old.
2)Excessive minnow votes, without whale or dolphin votes, diluting the payout by increasing the shares but not the price, thus making the article itself less appealing to curators focused on high payout content and not necessarily content they find to be high quality (a trajectory which is basically determined within the first hour of a post absent of a few random whale upvotes).
3)Elephant in the room (favoritism, scams, manipulation etc...). This I have not seen personally, and I don't necessarily think even if it existed would impact high quality content over the long hall, but it does mean a steemian, like myself who doesn't do an official introduction post, and just posts an article out of the blue with no core following, is probably going to get out-earned by a cat meme.
Side note: I am actually all for free market capitalism and bending the rules until they damn near break for a competitive edge, so I am not going to denounce anyone for manipulating the system to keep themselves on top, except for the fact that the system has to stay a working system. Regardless of what anyone thinks about the post I made, If I keep writing posts like that one consistently and keep getting outperformed by lackadaisical subject matter bullshit posts, it will mean the system is broken. And the only way to hide it would be to undermine my credibility as a creator, or imply my subjects or style doesn't necessarily satisfy the core demographic of the steemit community. Both of these arguments are complete bullshit. I was a Washington D.C. Capitol Hill reporter and I watch Rick and Morty, proof.